Monday, June 23, 2014

Ed Pacht on Poetry as a Calling


Ed Pacht, a frequent contributor to this blog, has written:

Poetry is a calling. As a Christian, I consider it a sacred calling, an expression of something other than earthly. I consider this true even when, as is the case in most of these poems, the subject matter is not religious at all.

A poem represents a stepping aside from ordinariness, a suspension of the usual way of thinking, an entrance into a realm of words that point to what is beyond words. I find this to be true even in the most trivial of my poems. Even when I am making a bad pun, I find that I am not seeing as I usually see, nor thinking as I usually think. And then there are poems that speak of deep things I can barely imagine, and these too arise from extraordinary ways of thinking.



Ed Pacht's poems

Go Ye Into the City
Fire Screaming in the Sky
Pain Like Broken Bones
A Really Big Party
Mass of the Visitation
Lament for the Hills
Reflections on Screaming Fire
The Rose
Spoiled Milk
Why Do I Write?
Acrostic for Hannah Mulliken
Leah's Burden
Love-Soaked Road
Ed Pacht Captures Mickey Blue Eyes
Novum Ordo
From Random to Reason
Jesus and the Concrete Jungle
Thumbs Migthier Than Fear

2 comments:

ed pacht said...

What a surprise to see one of my old prefaces here. That spurred me to say more . . .

To Be a Poet Is …

To see around a corner where eyes can never see,
to hear the distant music playing soundlessly,
to think the thoughts that lie beyond our logic’s reach,
to know the deepest myst’ries that none can ever teach,
to write the words on paper that cannot tell the tale,
for every effort that we make is surely bound to fail,
to speak the words we write, proclaiming them out loud,
to know that they will not be heard by the listening crowd,
to write a verse as best we can, but never good enough,
and wonder in our hearts just why we write this stuff,
to see ourselves as poets, and wonder if it’s true,
to always search our minds for things both fresh and new,
to seek that goal and never make it,
but find a step and firmly take it.

Alice C. Linsley said...

Ed, thanks for this! You are an inspiration to many.